This invention relates to an improved automated processing system. The system is particularly useful in chemical laboratories and the like.
Automated laboratory automation has been of increasing importance in recent years. Among the principal publications relating to said systems are Advances in Laboratory Automation Robotics, 1984 by Gerald L. Hawk and Janet R. Strimatis (1984, Zymark Corporation, Inc., Hopkinton, MA) and "Trends in Laboratory Automation" American Laboratory, pages 51-57, February 1985.
The term "robot", as used herein, means: "A reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through variable programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks". This is the definition for the term "robot" that has been adopted by the Robotic Institute of America.
Robotic systems particularly adapted for servicing laboratory systems have been commercially available for several years. The systems have, as a general rule, comprised a robot adapted to interact with a plurality of operating stations. In a typical operation, a robot would be one module of an operating system and would interact with several other modules, which may be called work stations, to achieve the processing of chemical samples. For example, a general purpose gripping hand, a syringe operating hand, a pipette station, a liquid dispensing station, a diluting station are typical stations.
Some such systems are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,510,684, 4,578,764 and 4,586,151. The systems described in the latter two patents are characterized by their ability to readily incorporate operating systems (e.g., work stations) having functions not even contemplated when the original system was configured.
In what is believed to be the most widely used such processing system, that described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,586,151, the user would lay out his processing stations in any convenient pattern and then instruct a robot in a given processing action (usually by leading it through a processing action), then assigning a "name" to the action and storing the action as a "name" in the automated "dictionary" within the control system whence the action could be recalled by name. Even though such programming tasks, once understood by an operator, were not intellectually challenging, the task of setting up a system and getting it operating efficiently was laborious. As the number of stations in a system increased, the number of variables to keep in mind to avoid collisions and otherwise avoid conflicts in instruction made the task laborious for those skilled in computer programming. Even with the above-mentioned "teach and name" system, it was even more burdensome for skilled chemists and technicians of the type more likely to be employed by chemical laboratories. Thus, setting up of such operations often took many days, even weeks, in typical laboratories. A natural consequence of this problem was the reluctance of many users to modify or extend the use of their systems.
As a consequence of this problem, it was decided to attempt to improve the ease with which a given automated process could be implemented, expanded and modified by the type of personnel more readily available to a customer.